March 2011 Archive

As a follow-up to my blog post yesterday, there’s another area that’s worth noting in the resurgence of interest in BC preparedness, and that’s standards. For a long time, we’ve had a multitude of both industry and government standards on BCM management including Australian Standards BCP Guidelines, Singapore Standard for Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery Service Providers (which became much of the foundation for ISO 24762 IT Disaster Recovery), FFIEC BCP Handbook, NIST Contingency Planning Guide, NFPA 1600, BS 25999 (which will become much of the foundation for the soon to be released ISO 22301), ISO 27031, etc. There are also standards in other domains that touch on BC, security standards like ISO 27001/27002.

And when you come down to it, several of the broad risk management standards like ISO 31000 are applicable. At the end of the day, the same risk management disciplines underpin BC, DR, security and enterprise risk management. You conduct a BIA, risk assessment, then either accept, transfer or mitigate the risk, develop contingency plans, and make sure to keep the plans up to date and tested.

In my most recent research into various BCM software vendors and BC consultancies, as well as input from Forrester clients, BS 25999 seems to be the standard with the most interest and adoption. In the US at least, part of this I attribute to the fact that BS 25999 is now one of the recognized standards for US Department of Homeland Security’s Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program. The other standards are NFPA 1600 and ASIS SPC.1-2009. I’ve heard very few Forrester clients mention the latter as their standard.

During the last 12 to 18 months, there have been a number of notable natural catastrophes and weather related events. Devastating earthquakes hit Haiti, Chile, China, New Zealand, and Japan. Monsoon floods killed thousands in Pakistan, and a series of floods forced the evacuation of thousands from Queensland. And of course, there was the completely unusual, when for example, ash from the erupting Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland forced the shutdown of much of Western Europe’s airspace. These high profile events, together with greater awareness and increased regulation, have renewed interest in improving business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness. Last quarter, I published a report on this trend: Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery Are Top IT Priorities For 2010 And 2011.

A decade after launching the SAML standard and seeing its, shall we say, stately pace of adoption, it’s wild to see real single sign-on and federated attribute sharing starting to take off for social networking, retail sites, online gaming, and more — not to mention seeing the US government starting to consume private-sector identities on citizen-facing websites.

Last week, we published a report on Outsourcing Identity Assurance. In it, I examine this “Government 2.0” effort, including the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), and its innovations around identity assurance, and the confidence you can have in the real-world verification of the identity you’ve been given by an identity provider. We’re predicting you’ll see new Web 2.0-ish ways to outsource identity verification in the coming three years, driven by use cases like e-prescribing, high-value eCommerce, and even online dating.

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As we speak to companies worldwide, many express their frustration with the cost and complexity of physical tokens. Our staple response is: "Oh yes, these solutions are hard to integrate and operate, but they provide the extra level of security required in an enterprise environment." However, today’s RSA SecureID breach goes against our typical advice and demonstrates that even the most hardened solution is vulnerable to insider threats – as it appears that the information leaked by (or social-engineered out of?) an RSA insider caused the security hole.

This situation draws attention to two basic themes that we are consistently hearing about:

Monitor your employees' activities and behavior patterns; and

Use lighter-weight authentication such as adaptive and risk-based authentication.

Both topics are areas we plan to discuss in greater depth this year. Please stay tuned for more reports from us on these topics!